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Is it just me or does each year seem to go by more quickly than the last? For the majority of digital marketers that’s arguably truer than for anyone else – at least it feels that way. No doubt that’s due in some part to the all the hats we’re wearing.

This lack of time and resources for so many marketers is exactly why now is the best time to get a head start on planning your email marketing strategy for 2015.

We could easily come up with a list of 10 or more resolutions for the new year, but really they can all be distilled down to just one – identify what worked and what didn’t in 2014 to inform and prioritize your strategy in 2015.

If you’re responsible for email marketing at your e-commerce or retail company – run, don’t walk, into your boss’s office and demand your well-deserved bonus. When she asks how you’ve suddenly become so empowered just explain the new reality of holiday sales.

Black Friday is no longer just the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. With earlier offers and more online sales, Black Friday is now generally considered the period from Thanksgiving Thursday through the following Sunday.

Despite having a longer period this year, the New York Times estimates that shoppers visiting stores and websites spent 11% less, from $57.4 billion to $50.9 billion. So far, retailers seem to be at a loss to explain the unexpected downturn.

Leaves are falling, daylight is fleeting and as the year starts to come to a close there’s a slight panic in the air as marketers rush to make sure goals are met. Many of those goals include driving traffic and revenue through holiday email marketing.

Yet ask anyone about the state of their inbox and they’ll complain of being overwhelmed with too many emails — particularly this time of year. Even email marketers will commiserate that there’s too much to keep up. With so much inbox stress you might expect a backlash — a mass unsubscribing from email lists or a sudden increase in carpel tunnel syndrome from repeated clicks on the spam button. In fact, the opposite is true.

Email marketing software is inherently different from other cloud-based solutions — you can’t just “set it and forget it”. In other words, you’re not done after you’ve built out the core set of features and developed a pipeline for new releases. You can have great looking templates and intuitive campaign workflows, but if users’ emails aren’t getting in the inbox it’ll all be for nothing.